I’m glad that others besides myself in this case David Ignatius are making the point I did about limited war:
Here’s President Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell: He has proposed a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State that is, in the words of Harvard professor Graham Allison, “limited, patient, local and flexible.” This calibrated approach makes sense to Allison, one of America’s most experienced strategists, because it limits U.S. exposure in fighting an adversary that doesn’t immediately threaten America.
The problem is that military history, since the days of the Romans, tells us that limited war is rarely successful. Policymakers, when faced with a choice between going “all in” or doing nothing, usually choose a middle option of partial intervention. But that leads to stalemates and eventual retreats that drive our generals crazy. The warrior ethos says, “If you’re in it, win it.” The politician rounds the edges.
Sadly, I fear he’s more likely to draw the conclusion that, since limited war is rarely successful, we should practice unlimited war rather than limiting our waging of war to cases in which we can’t do cost-benefit analysis.
Military history is full of limited actions; I’m not sure how Ignatius can make that claim. They tend not to be written about.
Arguments about limited war depend on the definition – what makes a war limited? Three possible criteria:
– Limited scope of violence
– Limited level of mobilization
– Limited war aims
– Some combination of the three
By any of these criteria, the vast majority of wars in history were limited wars. More importantly, the notion that “limited war is rarely successful” is wrong. It’s more accurate to say that war, in general, is rarely worth the cost to either side which is a lesson that homo sapiens appears unable to learn. We are, as a species, not very good at assessing the costs and benefits of conflict.
Anyway, the attempt to distill the spectrum of conflict to “all in” or “do nothing” is what is ahistorical nonsense. War is a spectrum that ranges from extermination to what might be called a heightened state of armed observation. Furthermore (war 101 here), war is a political act between political communities which reflects political realities, thus there will always be limited war since political aims are rarely maximalist. Like anything else, means must be weighed against ends and if those are out of balance, then bad things happen.
And then there is this:
“I’d argue that even in the current fog of policy, there’s a discernible path ahead. Turkey is basically right in arguing for a buffer zone in northern Syria, protected by some kind of no-fly zone. The U.S. should start by providing anti-aircraft missiles to the CIA’s vetted and trained Syrian opposition fighters. This will boost the rebels’ popularity, in addition to stopping Assad’s planes.
A buffer zone will give the U.S. time to train a real rebel army that can push the Islamic State out of eastern Syria and hold the territory until negotiations someday bring a new Syrian government. In Iraq, meanwhile, it will take months to train a Sunni force that can recapture Mosul and Fallujah, but the U.S. has at least stopped the extremists’ advance on Irbil and Baghdad, and recaptured the Mosul Dam.”
More utter nonsense. For all his historical revisionism, Ignatius and the other members of the beltway GroupThink learned little from the conflicts of the the last twenty five years, much less the last 2,500. They understand very little about war, armed forces and the utility of military force.
Andy, why will the trained rebels be any more effective than the Iraqi army that we created? Didn’t we train them, too?
Sorry, Andy, missed the quotation marks above.
Personally I want the US to issue letters of marque for this kind of stuff. Surely they can be adopted for land use.
The author seems to believe that the Turks are waiting for US leadership. If so, he is delusional. The Turks are the anvil, and ISIS is the hammer. Once all the Kurds are dead, the Turks will begin killing ISIS.
“Limited war” is never defined.
The ultimate goal is to impose one’s will upon another. This can be done through peaceful means such as politics or forceful means such as war, but it is the exertion of power nonetheless. War is a tool. It is the application of force to obtain a goal.
The process is to determine the strategic goals and the means to attain those goals. Forceful implies violence, bloodshed, and cruelty. The use of force must be applied in relation to obtaining the goal and nothing else. Too often, those who understand peaceful means do not understand forceful means, and they limit the means.
The problem is not limited goals. The problems is limiting the means to obtain unlimited goals.
Ice,
I’m sure you can imagine the howls of “mercenaries!” should the US bring back letters of marque.
PS, I’m back in the States now enjoying cool Florida weather. Yes, I said cool Florida weather, everything being relative.
What Andy said. Rome destroying Carthage. Joshua killing every man, woman, child and animal in Jericho. Total warfare. Most wars have been limited in some way or another. I don’t think it is especially clear that relatively unlimited war is a better means of achieving one’s political goals. I don’t know if our current path will work or not, but I don’t have much reason to think a more aggressive war would work, we already tried that once, and I do know it will cost a lot more.
Steve
Yeah, Andy, but I don’t care. We’re the bad guys anyway, so lets just go with it. Cut the Xi/Blackwater guys loose to do their thing. Or other motivated types.
How about letters of marque to hackers to go after our enemies in the digital domain?
@Icepick
I have seen it suggested, possibly here, and I think it is an interesting idea.
I have not kept up with it for many years, but you can hack the hackers. They have the same vulnerabilities – openings and communications.
I don’t think it’s that obscure. Our historical experience over the period of the last 60 years is that we don’t do what I suspect you would call “wars of limited objectives” well. Maybe someone else does but not us. We can do raids but not wars of limited objectives.
I think that none of Korea, Viet Nam, the Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq have been successful for us and my explanation is that we subjected all of them to cost-benefit analysis which by the standards I would use means we should not have gone to war there at all.
Dave,
I’m not sure I would characterize most of those as wars of limited objectives. Plus, there is the inevitable “mission creep” as the objectives change over time. The Gulf War is probably the best example of a war with actual limited objectives where the means were consistent with the ends. The problem is that objectives changed post-conflict (the no-fly zones, etc.) that made a future conflict inevitable.
Since 9/11 we haven’t done limited objectives. In Iraq and Afghanistan we intended to fundamentally reorder political power and the societies of those “nations.”
So long as removing Saddam Hussein wasn’t within the objectives future conflict was always inevitable. Since the price of Bush 41’s coalition was leaving Saddam Hussein in place, future conflict was “baked in” to the Gulf War. I also believe that 9/11 was the price we paid for the Gulf War (why did we have troops in KSA?) so to my mind between that and the thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam in the war’s aftermath it wasn’t a particularly successful war.
Sure we have. We’ve been removing governments without defeating peoples.